Dr. Crandall: Cholera to Plague Haiti for Years

Haiti remains mired in turmoil a year after the devastating earthquake killed tens of thousands and left more than 1 million homeless, Dr. Chauncey Crandall tells Newsmax.TV. The Florida cardiologist recently traveled to the ravaged country to help with the latest calamity: cholera.

“Cholera is going to be there for years,” he said. “It’s not going to be something that is going to disappear. So we have many people that are dying. This form of cholera is the most virulent form, the most toxic form. You can die within four hours, so these people are in desperate need of treatment.”

Crandall traveled to Haiti on behalf of the Chadwick Foundation, established in honor of his son, Chad, who died of leukemia. “All of us in medicine want to help people and I just felt a call, an internal call, to go. And I went,” he said of his trip, during which he worked in camp treating cholera victims.

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“It’s still chaos,” he said. “It’s no different than the day after the earthquake. I can’t see that there’s been any progress and all we can do is go over and help. The situation is desperate, the need is great. I don’t know how they are going to recover.”

The way to help the Haitians is to donate money to those who are willing to go there and do the work, such as relief organizations and church groups, said Crandall, whose Chadwick Foundation ministers to the poor, the sick, and the injured.

The upcoming hurricane season is likely to make the situation even worse, said Crandall, who is chief of the Cardiac Transplant Program at the world-renowned Palm Beach Cardiovascular Clinic in Palm Beach Gardens and editor of Dr. Crandall’s Heart Health Report, a newsletter that Newsmax publishes.

“These people have been damaged — the earthquake, the hurricanes, the lack of water, the lack of food. You can imagine the chaos that this creates and bad things happen in the middle of a chaotic situations. These times are going to be difficult times, really, I believe, for generations.”